A picture has leaked showing a Motorola branded side-slider for Sprint. The device was allegedly pictured at the home of a Sprint beta tester who did demonstrate that the phone was working by sending out some text messages. You might have noticed the lack of any physical buttons save for the QWERTY, which of course points to Android 4.0 being installed out of the box. The QWERTY features 5 rows and offset keys and looks similar to the ones you will find on the Motorola DROID series.

The Motorola PHOTON 4G

A couple of months ago, we told you about a sequel to the Motorola PHOTON 4G for Sprint that is supposedly called the Motorola PHOTON Q 4G LTE. Well, suppose the "Q" stands for QWERTY keyboard (it wouldn't be the first time) and perhaps this device is the Motorola PHOTON Q 4G LTE? Obviously, the Motorola PHOTON does have that trademark diamond cut, and the pictured device does appear to have some type of angle to the corners.

Motorola hasn't added a physical QWERTY to its non-DROID models since the early days of the Android Revolution, so Sprint customers are getting quite a treat here. The QWERTY keyboards found on the Motorola DROID 3 and Motorola DROID 4 are among the best that have ever been attached to a smartphone and there is no reason to think that this one won't be as easy to use.

The lack of specs isn't too surprising considering the story behind the photograph. If the device is in the middle of being beta tested, it shouldn't be too long before we hear something about this model from Sprint.

FEATURED VIDEO

Posts: 5713; Member since: Oct 23, 2011

perhaps there will be a Photon Q 4G LTE and a Photon 4G LTE in much the same way as the Droid 4 and the Droid Razr MAXX on Verizon. o:
this looks like a nice offering for Sprint. i'd definitely take one if i was on Sprint.

Posts: 5713; Member since: Oct 23, 2011

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 5:09 PM 4

Posts: 3131; Member since: Jan 12, 2010

From the looks of the photo I would say it is Super AMOLED, the colors look very deep and the blacks look black lol
But yea I would not be surprised if the Droid 5 was on it's way in the next couple months.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 7:58 PM 1

Posts: 5713; Member since: Oct 23, 2011

the contrast angles looks kind of AMOLED-ish but the blacks aren't completely as black as they are on my Razr, you can see where the bottom of the screen is on the phone in the picture by the difference in black levels of the display and the bezel. you can't see that on SA, SAA, SA+ or HDSA displays.

Posts: 28; Member since: May 26, 2010

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 5:01 PM 2

Posts: 1111; Member since: Mar 16, 2012

A new MoPho... Sounds cool! The first one was pretty good, despite the thickness of it. I hope they do make the version with no QWERTY keyboard, I find a physical mobile keyboard hard to type on sometimes.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 5:05 PM 1

Posts: 1034; Member since: Mar 30, 2012

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 6:05 PM 3

Posts: 3131; Member since: Jan 12, 2010

agreed with mas, how could anyone not like having a physical keyboard is beyond me. Touch screens are perfect for web browsing, video, and photos but horrible when it comes to actually typing out long texts or e-mails. No matter how big the screen gets, a lot of times it's still nowhere near as accurate as a physical keyboard you can actually press down on.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 9:08 PM 2

Posts: 3131; Member since: Jan 12, 2010

The original Droids keyboard and large screen was the killer combo that switched me from the iPhone to Android. I had the Epic as well, loved it to death(Sprint was my only issue). I had the Droid 3 and loved it to death. My only issue was lack of LTE. I even considered getting the Droid 4.
My dream phone is a 4.3 inch phone with a slide out keyboard like this. Best of both worlds!

posted on Jun 17, 2012, 6:26 AM 1

Posts: 1452; Member since: Nov 05, 2010

Actually, I can type faster with the physical keyboard on my Evo Shift than I can with Swype. I can key out a 160+ character text in less than 30secs with the physical keyboard, but it takes about 60secs with Swype. I do have to say that Swype is great for single hand texting thought.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 9:05 PM 2

Posts: 572; Member since: Sep 07, 2011

Looks nice, I really hope Sprint doesn't add the LTE tag line to every new release, I can understand if its a sequel like this and the EVO lte, but after awhile I feel most people would find that annoying. Myself included.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 6:22 PM 1

Posts: 1452; Member since: Nov 05, 2010

I agree that adding the "LTE" tag to devices is or might become annoying, but that is how they differentiate the WiMax devices from the LTE devices. I'm sure that once Sprint stops supporting WiMax devices, and LTE becomes the standard for 4G, they will eventually stop adding "LTE" to device names.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 8:06 PM 1

Posts: 280; Member since: Apr 30, 2012

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 8:45 PM 0

Posts: 5713; Member since: Oct 23, 2011

yeah, with the later leaks of ICS for the Droid Razr you can make it into a Global Device, the same will happen for the Rezound, the 4, the MAXX of course, the Spectrum and i would imagine the Galaxy S III will be a World Device out of the Box.

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 9:10 PM 1

Posts: 3621; Member since: Jan 19, 2011

Would be all over this. Physical keyboards need to make a mini-comeback. Certainly they will never outnumber onscreen offerings, but there really needs to be a couple offerings per carriers for those of us who want them.
Loved the feel and basic performance of the Photon. A great offering bested only by the Epic 2 on Sprint, in my unimportant opinion. Bring on the hardware, Moto!!!

posted on Jun 16, 2012, 8:37 PM 2

Posts: 5713; Member since: Oct 23, 2011

yeah, it sucked having to defer to Samsung and their E4GT when it came to Sprint's offerings even though i'm such a Motorola fan. Motorola fans on Sprint would try to argue all the good points there is for the Photon and i'd just be like "yeah, i know but it's just so out-classed" o.o

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers at https://www.parsintl.com/phonearena or use the Reprints & Permissions tool that appears at the bottom of each web page. Visit https://www.parsintl.com/ for samples and additional information.